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This paper aims to analyze how Arturo Pérez-Reverte claims the legacy of the Enlightenment in his historical novel Hombres buenos (2015). The history of two members of the Real Academia Espartóla, in charge of travelling to Paris in the hopes of obtaining all the volumes of the Encyclopedia and bringing them to Spain, allows Pórez-Reverte to create an original account of eighteenth-century Spain. Pórez-Reverte belongs to an intellectual tradition that depicts the Hispanic Enlightenment as inexistent, incomplete, insufficient, or unoriginal. At the same time, however, he keeps his distance from such tradition, by questioning the consensual image of a civilized and enlightened France, and by showing that Spaniards also participated in the creation and dissemination of the Enlightenment. This paper also analyzes how the fictitious account of the eighteenth century is nor only a defense of enlightened Spaniards, but also a way to express desires for the twenty-first century, especially regarding the political and linguistic unity of Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has been structured in three areas. In the first one, the author shows the relevance that words and conversations among individuals have on social research, both terms being very important to the well-known sociologist and writer Franco Ferrarotti. In the second part, the author explains the necessary qualitative methodology to be used when analysing a main topic. In the third one, the author analyses the reality of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) from the gender perspective to detect if they are or not a reflection of that Spanish reality regarding sex discrimination. Finally, this paper states the challenge the Spanish society needs to face to outweigh sex inequality without excluding the NGOs or any other form of association. This paper calls for the involvement of society, which along with the state and market, has an important task to accomplish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to understand the position of Vicente Blasco Ibáñez in both international and Spanish literary historiography from the point of view of the concept ofarrière-garde. In Spanish literary historiography, with the exception of his naturalistic works, Blasco Ibáñez's novels have either been dismissed or relegated to a peripheral position in contrast to the canon of the Generation of 1898, on the one hand, and Modernism, on the other. This situation is explored in relation to the way Blasco Ibáñez himself understood his career, as explained in his ‘Carta’ to Julio Cejador y Frauca, who included it in hisHistoria. Furthermore, the role played by translations is also taken into consideration with regard to the circulation of works by Blasco Ibáñez, a factor which does not apply in the case of either the Generation of 1898 or Modernist writers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Religious freedom has always been considered to be a central issue in liberal and enlightened thought. Thus, attention has often been drawn to the shortage of observations on tolerance in the works of Spanish enlightened reformers, as also to the uncompromising prohibition of non-Catholic religions contained in the Cadiz Constitution of 1812. In recent years, some scholars have argued that, because of the absence of religious minorities in Spain, the dominating influence on Spanish society of the Catholic Church and Spain's insufficient openness to European culture, Spanish liberals did not really begin to appreciate and discuss religious freedom as an ideal until the periods of exile following from 1814 and 1823. This paper aims to show, however, through analysis of one of the most relevant Spanish journals of the eighteenth century, that the matter of freedom of religious belief was indeed debated in Spain during the reigns of Carlos III and Carlos IV and that, in spite of the threat of censorship, some Spaniards did dare to write and publish work in favour of religious tolerance during that period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the theatrical genre of the loa as it evolved in Spain in the second half of the seventeenth century. After reviewing some of the main studies which discuss this genre and outlining the main stages in its development, this article considers the generic type of the loa entremesada from two perspectives: discussing, on the one hand, the growing professionalism that affected all theatrical manifestations, including the loa; and, on the other, considering the aspirations entertained by those who composed works of this kind to attract noble and royal patronage. For it is necessary to take account of such influential factors when evaluating the products of the Spanish stage in that period. The context within which the loa entremesada evolved is that in which the commercial and court theatre operated and interacted, and in which both benefited by sharing playwrights, companies and the repertory of plays, despite the different demands made by their different stage-facilities and -techniques. Whatever the type of theatre in which it is performed, whether palace-theatre or corral, the loa always functions on two levels: on the restricted level of its own content, and on the other level where it illuminates the more extensive dramatic work which it both precedes and serves to introduce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The entry into Barcelona of the Nationalist troops in January 1939 and the taking over of official information in the city by the Director of the Servicio Nacional de Propaganda, the poet Dionisio Ridruejo , meant the end of the style of information dissemination established by the democratic government. Ridruejo replaced the journalist Jaume Miravitlles, who throughout the war headed the Comissariat de Propaganda, the official organ of the autonomous government of Catalonia. This paper attempts to reconstruct and analyse the final efforts of official republican propaganda in Catalonia, and contrasts them with the propaganda of occupied Barcelona, which, in nationalist terminology, had just been ‘liberated’. We will analyse how the end of the Civil War represents the replacement of propaganda carried out by professionals in persuasion by an alternative supervised, and, often dictated, by the military. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

After the death of the dictator, Spanish cinema began to offer a series of films committed to portraying the Civil War. These narratives often selected characters from the Republican side—civilians or combatants—underscoring their suffering and the violence that characterized this era. Yet, it could be asked whether these productions genuinely attempt to rehabilitate the Republicans, who previously had been so vilified. In contrast to the films made during the dictatorship, which were based on simplified and mythical representations, do these new stories succeed in creating new myths? This paper sets out to examine what has changed and what has not in representations of the Civil War in film productions from the transition to democracy onwards. In this way, we can analyse how aspects of the Francoist myth-making persist in certain films which retain obvious links to the cinema of the dictatorship. It also explores how the representation of the war evolves in five films dealing with two Republican myths: the siege of Madrid and the defence of Barcelona. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyse the relationship between the Spanish poet Jorge Guillén and the English Hispanist John Brande Trend through the correspondence they exchanged in the time period between the 1930s and the 1950s. It is not a full catalogue and comprises only sixteen letters. The exile is a topic that comes up frequently in them, one of the main reasons that triggered this correspondence, and is present in many of the letters: first during the war when Guillén asked Trend, then a university Professor of Spanish in Cambridge, for his support to be appointed reader in Cambridge, which would allow him to leave Spain; and in the following decades, when nostalgic memories of the Spain of the Twenties surface in their words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper concerns a passage in a lost work by Diego de Valera in defence of conversos, dedicated to Lope de Barrientos, bishop of Cuenca, and against a friar who preached in that town, where the author was born and lived at that moment (1458). We analyse both the specific circumstances that led to the composition of the text, which are linked with Mosen Diego's biography and the local political situation, and its ideological and literary aspects, especially its relation to the rest of Valera's works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the evolution of Spanish women from the last two decades of the nineteenth century until the 1980s as presented in La enredadera (1984) by Josefina R. Aldecoa, with a focus on the diachrony of socio-cultural discourses and the analysis of the female protagonists' emotions. Far from the traditional association of emotion with weakness and irrationality, and following theorists such as Arlie Russell Hochschild, June Crawford, Michel Foucault and Anthony Giddens, emotions are regarded here as systems of representation: they have a capacity for agency, can be modified depending on the individual's recognition of her inner experience, and influence how we understand the world and who we are. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents an investigation of two modes of compensatory education programmes in elementary schools in Spain, integrated and segregated, and it effect on students' development. For this purpose an ethnographic study using case-study methodology was undertaken in two school in Madrid with students from cultural minorities. Five students from each school participated in the study (one from each school stage, between 4 and 14 years of age). Assessment included language and mathematics learning tests, reading, a self-concept scale (Piers-Harris) and a sociogramme. The tutors, other professionals of the same centre and the pupils' families were also interviewed. The results were analysed both qualitative and quantitatively. They show that neither mode of education offers an adequate educational response. However, overall, the school centre with an integrated approach achieves better results. Finally, the results are analysed from Bronfenbrenner's bioecological theory (1997), and some suggestions to improve educational practice in compensatory education are put forth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]